Google Translate

On Wednesday Google released a new version of Google Translate (free) in the App Store that has some great new features. Most importantly, it now includes Word Lens: you can point your camera at some text in a foreign language, and the translated text will instantly overlay the image on your screen. You don't even need an Internet connection. According to the announcement on the Official Google Blog, the translation works between English and French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish, with more languages to be added.

I can't believe I missed the release of Google Translate (free) last month. Or maybe I assumed it was just another app for text translation. But it is so much cooler than that. It can also do speech recognition, such that you canspeak the phrase or sentences that you want translated, and it will speak back to you the phrase or sentences in the target language. It's fun to play with. When you speak the text, it shows on-screen what it thought you said as well as a text translation. Then if you tap the speaker icon, it speaks the text.